DOES DEATH END LIFE?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5391, 22 February 1929, Page 3

DOES DEATH END LIFE?

ASTRONOMER'S DENIAL “A THOUSAND TIMES NO.” NEW YORK, December 6. Thq Harvard astronomers to-day confirmed an announcement made by Professor shapley to the National Academy of Sciences, phi Monday that the centre of the universe; had been located in the constellation of Sagittarius, which is distant from the earth about 47,000,000 “light years.” (A “light yCar” is the distance which light travels in a year at the r.ate of 186,000 miles per second!.) Now comes Dr. Heber Curtis, a noted astronomer, and director of the Alleghany Observatory at Pittsburg, with another “discovery,” or, rather, an expression of. 'his belief that the spirit of man lives on after the body dies. “ UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE.” Addressing the American Institute, a learned philosophical organisation, upon the “unity of the universe,” Dr. Curtis said that what we crudely call the spirit of man makes new compounds ; plays with the laws of chemical actieju ; is beginning to guide the forces within the atom; changes the face of the earth; gives life to new forms; takes, life away from millions of animals and plants. A creative spirit, he asserts, cannot reasonably be less than the element which it controls. It is, simply a chemical action —a flame, but it is a flame that controls; its own flaming. This thing—soul, mind, or spirit—cannot well be the only exception'; in some way as yet impossible accurately to define, it, too, must possess continuity.

BETWEEN MATTER AND SPIRIT. Dr. Curtis first discussed in strict orthodox fashion the evident continuity of o;ur universe. Then he launched out upon “questions which the orthodox scientist is prbne to dismiss as insoluble.’’ Pointing to the gap between the structure and motion of a galaxy and an atom, he; said:

“I am personally ready to admit another gap between the world oif. mattei; and that which we may somewhat crudely, and without, an attempt at precise definition, effil the world of spirit. It appears to bq impossible to ascribe such concepts as 2 x 2 equals 4 ; Handel’s ‘Largo’; Keats’ ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’; or the higher, ethics, to mere behaviourisjn, or toi chanqe chemical interaction o t r concatenation of a host of hydro-carbon molecules under, self-created physical laws.' With space, energy, matter, and doubtless time apparently continual, with no atom are we oursejves the only manifestation that comes to afi end, stops, ceases, dies, is annir hilated, at threescore years and ten ? No, gentlemen, no; a thousand times no!” (Cheers.)